The Best Decision of My Life

The operator answered the phone to assist me and professionally asked, “How may I help you?”

While sobbing, I managed to muster, “I need to schedule an abortion, please.”

As the sentence came from my mouth, the words seemed unreal and unfamiliar. These are words coming from someone else, not from me. Not from someone in a committed relationship. Not from a professional woman with a stable income. And certainly not from a woman with two college degrees.

Yet here I was, trembling in the cold bathroom of my apartment, scheduling an abortion. As I made arrangements over the phone, I stared at the pregnancy test in front of me. I watched the small stick softly bounce between my trembling fingers.

Here I was, pregnant—something many women swoon over and feel “born to be”—and yet the first person I told was a complete stranger on the phone while scheduling an abortion. She will never know how grateful I was for her patience with me as I choked on my tears.

Looking back, I would never imagine that this stranger would be kinder about my circumstances than even some friends would be when they found out. “That’s disgusting,” one of my so-called liberal friends remarked when hearing the news.

After that, I learned quickly to be protective of who I told, and that’s how I became part of a secret club that few people talk about. I’ve previously read that one out of three women have had an abortion. But you certainly wouldn’t know it, because those of us “in the club” have learned to keep our lips sealed. Even now, I am compelled to write in anonymity.

Having an abortion was one of the best decisions of my life.

How do I write that sentence and stick my name to it? How do I convey to my family, friends, and co-workers that having an abortion was an overall positive experience for me? It was the pregnancy that drove me to tears.

My mother, like many women in my life, is strong and intelligent. But unfortunately, that did not keep her from entering into an abusive relationship with my father. It was confusing to be a little girl growing up in a house with walls constructed of fear and violence, rather than love and security. I grew up, trying to put others before myself, literally distancing my emotions from my brain and physical body.

Managing a healthy relationship certainly wasn’t something I learned to do well. On some level, even as a grown woman, I emotionally remained that little girl who believed herself undeserving of love. The same little girl with low self-esteem. The girl without boundaries.

This is how I ended up in the worst relationship of my adult life. I was carrying the child of a man, who not unlike my father, was emotionally and physically abusive to me. Leave him, I had often told myself. And now that I was carrying his child, the harsh reality of our inevitable future hit me. And then came the question: What if this baby is a girl? What will he do to her? How will she be a pawn in this painful, endless game of violence that we charade as a relationship?

Having an abortion was one of the best decisions of my life.

I will never have a child to know his terror, his cruelty. And in an odd way, saving that child made me save myself, too. If I had the courage to have an abortion alone, I had the courage to find someone to love me.

And that’s exactly what I did. I hid the abortion from him, of course, and left the relationship without looking back. I eventually crossed paths with the kindest person I had ever met. We dated for five years before getting married.

I’m proud to say that the cycle of violence in my life is over. I loved the potential child inside of me more than I ever loved myself. And that love ended an entire history of family violence.

Having an abortion was one of the best decisions of my life. Have I said that yet?